If you decide to start your own business, you might be surprised to learn how much of its success depends on you.
Most people find this idea easy to understand and accept at first glance. How hard you work, how brilliant your solutons are, and how you treat people can clearly corelate to your success. Lazy, ineffective and rude people don’t generally make successful businesspeople. At the same time, most people don’t realise how intertwined your business’ journey is with your life stories, lessons and, even, traumas.
The same roots of your life that influence and support who you are do the same with the business you begin. A childhood that supported your confidence shows up when you pitch your ideas, products and services. A childhood that led you to believe that you are unvalued and unworthy shows up in how you deal with rejection (badly). Pick up the lesson that money is the goal above all others, and both clients and co-workers will wonder if your business is a good match for them.
Yet, while the story of your business begins with the story of your life, neither one ends there. As you grow, learning new and different lessons, your business changes alongside. This is a hopeful statement, because a terrible childhood doesn’t necessarily imprison you to a terrible life and an unsuccessful entrepreneurial endeavour. This is also a worrying statement, because if you do not learn and grow and change, both you and your business will remain stuck in your current status. It would be made worse if you learn lessons that contradict the creation of a sustainable, successful life, for your success would be be met with sabotage, and from your own hands. Your journey, therefore, is the same journey your business takes.
What stories do you carry?
We are all shaped by our environment. Some theories believe that your understanding of yourself first came from the people around you. Children absorb comments and judgements from their community. Tell one child they are capable and clever, and another they are naughty and noisy, and they grow up believing these stories, even if reality doesn’t match the tale.
To understand your roots, these stories you’ve been told need to be re-told, and given back to the people who told them. Consciously, carefully, the adjectives that you carry as yours can be traced to the stories and voices of others. Someone once called you naïve. Someone called you careless. Someone called you friendly and helpful. Someone called you things they should never have said. Someone related to you with contempt, or disdain, or affection, or love. Everything you believe about yourself came from a story, and most of them came from someone else.
Instead of carrying these stories, unconsciously and forever, take every adjective and ask, “Who said this?” Once the connection is made, let the story be returned to sender. It reflects their perspective, who they thought you were and should be, fixed in a moment of another place and time. Though it may have been accurate, once, you are not the same person — you don’t have to be.
What stories do you want to tell?
When you can let go of what has been made, you are now free to focus on what you want to make. Need proof that you can change? You weren’t always a business owner; you became one. It’s the same with life, with the added benefit that your personal growth influences your entrepreneurship journey.
Though the facts of your life may remain the same — the circumstances of your birth, for example — the story that you create from your facts and the story that you are creating of your life matter more. You can live through sexual assault, grow through that, and be someone who supports conversations about consent, boundaries and consequences. You can have an abusive childhood, and grow through that to be someone who guides others through the tough, rough and good times of life. The experience need not be traumatic, and the result need not be grand. It is the journey and the direction that matter.
Every new day offers you the chance to create your current story. You may have made bad business and personal decisions in the past. Good. You made a decision and you learned new information. You may have made great decisions in the past. Great, you have something you can choose to continue. The past does not matter as much as what you choose to do with your present and your future.
It doesn’t have to be business as usual.
If “usual” means a business that’s not making as much money as you want it to, if “usual” is a life filled with indolence and day dreaming, if “usual” is getting stuck in mental mazes and going round in circles, then thank goodness for change.
Entrepreneurs don’t choose to start a business to live the same old life. The same rebellious drive that leads you to walk your own path is both the same thing that keeps you from the growth you hope to achieve, and the way towards it. Building a business can be the most exposing, vulnerable thing you can do, because this relationship with yourself and the world is a reflection of the relationship you have within and your perception of your place in the world. Internal stories show up in external dealings, connections, projects and even profits. With nothing to hide behind, you can pretend, with the same stubbonness, that everything is fine, or you can choose to use the same strength to see yourself, first and in full, and ask, “Why?”
It will be the most confronting, exasperating, exhusting, and rewarding thing you do, on a daily, even hourly basis, sometimes with no break in between. Your business is a full-time project, and your journey is a 24/7 demand that only ends when you do. Thank goodness you’re rebelliously, stubbornly, strong.
The priorities are clear. By learning to manage and care for yourself first, you’re giving your business the best chance to thrive. So far as business advice, it’s unusual, and it’s true.
Your regulation shows up in your business. YouYour ability to understand people, marketing, sales, profits, operations,
To build your business, you need to build your life.